Chapter 2
Vero
The view from the Asylum roof is nice. I don’t know why I haven’t come up here before. From here I can see the entire island, and I am never coming down. Maybe I should just live here.
Everything is my fault.
Kayla is hurt, and the way her voice sounded when she said, “Get the fuck out of my life,” will bounce through my head forever. It’s not the first time someone has spoken those words to me—well, not the exact words, but in the end they all leave.
She also said she would never want me to leave, not for any reason. I know she meant that too. The confusing part is, my paper-cut princess doesn’t say things she doesn’t mean, so which one is true? She also told me I heal a part of her soul.
I sit on the edge of the roof and look down at the three waiting men below me.
Clay is pissed, standing with his arms crossed. Brawley is conflicted, and I know him well enough to know he is considering climbing up here to get me, but he will wait long enough to see if he can talk me into coming down. Ares just stands there with his hands in his pockets.
“Vero, get down here now,” Clay yells, as if that would actually work.
“Nope,” I say with a smile. “But thanks for the suggestion, I will forward it on to management.”
“It’s not a fucking suggestion,” he grits out.
“Sounded like one to me. It was very suggestion-like.”
It’s never a good sign when Brawley doesn’t say anything; it normally means he has decided something and is waiting for the right moment. I love him more than anything in this world, but he is not coming up here and I’m not going down.
“If you fall off that roof,” Clay says, “I will kill you myself.”
“That makes no sense. If I fall, I will die. But I think you know that.”
“Vero.”
“She said she would never want me to leave,” I tell them, which is the whole fucking point. I don’t know why they keep asking me to come down—it changes nothing. “She said not for any reason. Those were her words. I was there—I heard her say it. I have good hearing.”
“She also told you to get out of her life,” Ares says.
“That’s different,” I retort.
“Is it?”
“You know it is,” I fire back.
“Why don’t you come down and we can talk about it?” Ares offers in that diplomatic tone of his.
Brawley rubs his hands over his face, and Clay says something to him, but Brawley shakes his head.
My feet dangle over the edge, and underneath me the island is going about its business. I catch movement from the cornfield and spot Cave, who stares up at me, and I stare back. Maybe I should have paid him a visit; he could have stopped all the noise in my head.
My brain is very loud at the moment. It’s not the worst it has been, like when I was at the bar. Then my vision blurs and every thought races so fast I can’t catch them. I close my eyes and I see her, with that look on her face and blood on her hands. Yet all I can hear are her words.
Not for any reason.
I don’t hear the footsteps approaching until it’s too late. Vesper appears on my left and sits down. I don’t know how she found her way up here, which is annoying.
She looks out over the island and doesn’t say anything at first. It’s no secret we don’t like each other, but I put up with her because of Brawley and vice versa.
“Nice view,” she says, but doesn’t look at me.
“I know. I was thinking I should have come up here before now.”
“Mmhm,” she agrees.
Vesper isn’t one to fill the silence; she just sits and is okay with existing in the quiet. She finally stands and looks down at Brawley, Clay, and Ares. “Stop babying him!” she yells, then looks at me. “Get down.”
“No,” I say, “you can’t make me.”
“Yes, I can,” she states with a smirk. “I’ll push you.”
She pins me with one of her glares, and I laugh. Vesper isn’t threatening me to get a reaction; she means it. She will push me if she needs to.
“You wouldn’t hurt Brawley like that,” I say when she doesn’t stop looking at me like she wants to murder me.
“He would mourn you and get over it.”
“Fuck you,” I snap, and she laughs as she sits back down.
The gray paint on her face has a crack in it at the corner of her eye, and she looks scary as fuck.
“Never in this lifetime, I don’t want your cooties. But you need to get your ass down. You fucked up and need to own that and take accountability for your actions. You shouldn’t have gone to the bar.”
“I was worried about her.”
She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter—you still did what you did.”
“He was looking at her.”
She laughs this time. “It’s a fucking bar, Vero. Men look at women.”
“Not my woman, they don’t.”
She turns her head to look at me. “You put her job on the line, smashed the place up, and embarrassed her in front of everyone. Do you think because she told you once that she wants you around that she is going to be fine with what you did?”
“She said she never wants me to—”
“And I’m sure she meant it when she said it. But she also meant what she said at the bar. Both things can be true. You don’t get to pick one and ignore the other. That’s not how life works.”
“She was bleeding,” I say.
“I know.”
With a sigh, I look out at the island. It’s so calm. “I did that.”
“You did.”
Brawley is watching on, waiting to see what happens next. He knows how volatile it is when Vesper and I are close to each other—it never ends well. His eyes are on Vesper, but she hasn’t looked at him.
“Grow up, Vero,” she says, but there is no cruelty in her tone, which only makes it worse. “You’re not a child. You cannot do what you did then convince yourself it’s okay because she said she wants you around. Your actions don’t cancel that out.”
I don’t reply. What can I say when she is making a good point?
“You want her to stay,” Vesper continues. “Then give her a reason. Sitting up here is not one. It’s just somewhere you don’t have to feel what you did. But I bet she is feeling it right now.”
Looking down at my hands, I see they are shaking. They normally do as I start coming down from an episode and the noise turns down.
“She won’t want me back.”
“Maybe,” Vesper says as she stands up. “Or she just might. But you sitting up here won’t help anything.”
She holds out her hand, and I look at it for a moment. Vesper makes some good points, and I know she is right, even though that sits heavy on my chest and isn’t helpful right now.
“Nah, I think I’m going to stay up here.”
“Okay,” she says with a shrug.
Before I can blink, her foot connects with my back, and I’m falling.
It’s surprising how much time I have to think on my way down.
My brain, which has been running a thousand miles a minute for the last few days, picks this exact moment to slow down and become calm and observant.
I’m falling off the roof because she fucking pushed me.
Even though I knew she wanted to, I didn’t actually think she would do it. I need to brace myself for impact. It’s going to fucking hurt, so I close my eyes and wait for the pain.
Instead, I land on something soft, then I bounce and come back up a little before drifting down. Looking at the sky is all I can do. The wind is completely knocked out of me, and it takes my brain a second to understand that I’m not dead or in pain.
I turn my head and see Karo standing at one end of the mat alongside two of the other guys from the circus dressed as psychotic clowns. I stare back at the roof to find Vesper peering down at me, laughing. Honestly, it’s like I’m in the twilight zone. I don’t think I have ever seen her laugh.
Looking around more, I see Clay pinching the bridge of his nose, and Ares beside him. I finally make eye contact with Brawley, who has his arms crossed.
“Are you done?” Clay asks. “I have shit to do.”
“I think I might have bruised my ass.”
“Good,” he says.
Brawley reaches down and grabs my arm, pulling me to my feet.
“How did they get here?” I ask, motioning my head toward Karo and the others.
“Vesper texted me,” Karo says.
“She knew I wasn’t coming down?”
“Everyone knew you weren’t coming down.”
I stare down at my feet, but Brawley puts his finger under my chin and makes me look at him. When he does this, everything around me fades away.
“I don’t know how to fix it,” I murmur.
“You don’t tonight,” he says, moving his hand to the back of my neck and pulling me toward him. “Let’s go home for now.”
We don’t talk on the walk to the house; I know better than to try when he is in a mood like this.
When we get back, he follows me up the stairs and into our room, closing the door behind us.
When he turns to face me, he looks tired.
It is worse than angry because I know how to deal with an angry Brawley.
“Just say it.”
“I’m not going to say it,” he snaps.
“Brawley.”
“I said, I’m not going to say it.” He crosses the room, and I hold my ground. I need him to get angry at me—I need him to do something. “Fine, you scared me.”
“I know.” And I do, now that my brain isn’t consuming me.
“No, you don’t,” he says. “You never do in those moments.”
He isn’t wrong, and I won’t insult him by saying otherwise. I really don’t understand when I’m like this. I reach up and put my hand on his chest to find his heart thundering wildly. “I’m sorry.”
Brawley takes my wrist and walks me backward until the backs of my knees hit the bed, and I sit down. He stays standing and looks down at me. “Lie down.”
Once I do, he moves over me slowly. Internally, I do a happy dance, as this is his version of angry without wanting to trigger me. When Brawley wants to bury me, he goes slow, making sure I feel every second. His mouth finds my throat, and I close my eyes.
“You think you get to scare me?” he growls against my skin. “Look at me when I’m talking to you.” I look up at him and see the anger and frustration behind his eyes. “You’re going to feel me tomorrow.”
“Good,” I say, needing this right now. Something that cuts through everything and pulls me back into my own body. Brawley is the only person in the world I trust to do it.
His hands move over my body, and I drag my nails down his back, knowing exactly what I am doing to him. He wants to punish me, to go slow and draw it out, but right now I need him.
“Vero,” he warns. “Say you were a bad boy.”
“I need you,” I reply, drawing a growl from deep in his chest. “I was a bad boy.”
His control snaps. “That’s what I thought,” he mutters. “And you don’t get to act like that and not answer for it.”
Everything I have put him through the last few days comes out in the way his hands touch me.
It’s why I didn’t want him to be gentle.
He doesn’t say anything else, instead taking me by the hips and flipping me onto my stomach in one move.
My cheek hits the pillow, and his hand comes down flat between my shoulder blades, holding me there.
He moves behind me and rips my pants down.
This is the Brawley I need.
Warm spit rolls down my ass and his cock presses against me, then he pushes inside with one thrust, and I bite down on the pillow.
He digs his fingers into my hip. “Who do you belong to?” I don’t answer him fast enough, so his grip tightens, and he thrusts harder into me. “Don’t make me ask you again.”
“You,” I manage to get out before I moan into the pillow as he drives me into the bed.
His hold is bruising as he pulls me back onto his cock, but I don’t care; I want every mark he leaves on my body. Then he leans over me, pushing his chest flush against my back.
There is nothing in my head except him—the noise is completely gone. Kayla, the bar, the roof, all of it just fades away. There’s only him and the way he breathes against the back of my neck, plus the way his hands hold me like he is furious but terrified of letting go.
His hand slides up my spine, fastening onto the back of my neck, and I groan into the pillow.
“You scared me,” he says again, and his pace quickens. “You don’t get to do that to me. Say you scared me, say it.”
Thrust.
“I scared you.”
Thrust.
“Again.”
Thrust.
“I scared you.”
Thrust.
“That’s it,” he says. “Take it.”
His pace doesn’t let up, each snap of his hips pushing me into the mattress. I grip the sheets as the headboard hits the wall.
“Don’t move unless I tell you to.”
His hand moves to the front of my throat.
“Stay with me,” he whispers against my ear. “Don’t disappear on me again.”
He pulls me back against him again, my back to his chest, as he squeezes my throat harder.
Brawley shows me how much he cares, in the way only we know how.
My vision blurs, and my whole body tightens around him.
When I tip over the edge, he is right behind me, my name on his lips, his grip tight enough that it’s all I feel.
Once he pulls out, I roll over onto my back, but Brawley remains above me and presses his forehead to mine. “Don’t do that to me again. I hate not knowing where you are.”
“Microchip me,” I say, and his brow furrows.
“You’re not a fucking dog, Vero.”
I smirk at him. “No shit, but then you’d always know where I am.”
He rolls us sideways and pulls me against him. I know he won’t microchip me, though there are a few people here who will. I never want him to be scared again about not being able to find me.